Typical Swedish

Saturday, December 20, 2008

Now the wonderful Nobel prize has again been awarded to wonderful scientists that have made wonderful abstract research into the origin of life or how we can clone ourselfs into even more people on this earth and how we might make new technological advances that some wonderfully large companies can make wonderful products that might pollute the environment and make a lot of rich people even richer.

It's not wrong to do advanced research but sometimes I wish that more focus was put on peoples lifes and especially to make everybodys life on this planet a little better, not just for people in the rich part of the world who can buy new funny products.

And then I thought why is it that the Nobel prize get 99% of the media attention when the Swedish Right Livelihood prize awarded at about the same time get very little publicity?

This award is a prize for people who are working hard to do just what I thought was the most important thing today, help poor people to get a better life, to stop injustice in the world and really try to make a difference here and now for our shared world that nobody owns. How come it is not the Right Livelihood Award that is the most valued prize a person can win?

Thursday, November 20, 2008

One was the head of the postal service in Sweden, his salary was 900000 SKR per month, roughly $112500 / month or $1350000 annually. It seems to be a little to much for swedish standards and even the swedish politicians thought this was a little over the top for one person needs now that it came to medias attention. Does he need it? We'll see what happens.

The other family we met in the media yesterday was an immigrated family who have been living in a run down flat, full of cochroaches and falling apart walls and floors for the last 10 years. They complain all they can but since they do not really understand the ways in sweden there is not much help given and the landlord does nothing to restore the flat. The children cannot sleep well because so many cochroaches wake them up during the night.

These two stories are still not typical tales of swedish lifes but with the current move to make it easier to be rich and poor in sweden maybe this will become the new typical swedish way of life?

Sunday, April 20, 2008

Well, more and more people are turning in to eco junkies in Sweden. Ecological shops are turning up like mushrooms and people are filling them like there was no tomorrow. Everybody wants to eat ecological food, preferebly homegrown by the local or not so local farmer. Also Fair Trade products are high on the list of goods that are ok to consume.

This is a positive movement I think, as long as we can trust that all the stuff that is moved over the disk is really eco products this is a really great typical Swedish trend!

By the way, why is it that ecological, natural food is labeled as ecological? Shouldn't ecological food be the normal standard and the food that is not ecological rather be labeled as not natural food containing non-natural additives? That would seem to be more logical to me..

Sometime during year 700-1100 AD Sweden experienced the Viking Age. The Vikings liked gods such as Oden and Thor. The word Thursday comes from the Swedish word Torsdag, Thors day.

In year 1812 Sweden as we know it now takes form. Since then sweden has not been engaged in war. At least not as a fighting nation. The border countries are Finland and Norway.

Now Sweden is a friendly part of Scandinavia and a leader in environmental care. The general goal is to have an ecologically sustainable Sweden by 2020. I really hope it works out but I wonder if the government can meet the expectations...

Sweden has something called Allemansrätt, "The right of public access" which gives everyone the possibility to go basically anywhere in nature when considering the essence of the phrase, "Do not disturb, do not destroy". This is one of the great things in Sweden making people feel more equal.